Due to the misinformation spread by the “Society” and some prominent fundamentalists, some, by no fault of their own, have a very limited understanding of the evidence for common descent and for evolution by natural selection. Even if you are a believer in creation, it might be an eye-opening experience for you to see and examine the evidence for yourself, or it may help you reconcile your faith with science.

Since the human genome was fully sequenced in 2003, an enormous amount of light has been shed on our understanding of our place in the Tree of Life.

The museum has a new Human Evolution gallery which explores the origins of Homo sapiens, tracing our lineage since it split from that of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzee and the bonobo.

The gallery takes visitors on an epic journey spanning the last seven million years. Starting in Africa with our early hominin relatives (who are more closely related to us than to chimpanzees), visitors will travel forward in time to meet our ancient human relatives as they spread into Europe and Asia. The journey ends with modern humans as the only surviving human species in the world today.Along the way, visitors can see star specimens from the Museum collections, and get to grips with some of the latest research shedding light on our past.

Because of the knowledge of evolutionary biology that I have built up since leaving the bOrg, and my knowledge of the “Society”‘s teachings that NHM staff are bound not to have, I will do a tour of the relevant parts of the museum.

The tour will be designed for those who don’t understand the theory and its implications, those who are confused at the great deluge of information about evolution that we are bombarded with, those who and those sit on the fence regarding evolution and creation debate (not to convince you not to believe in God, but to expose you to the evidence for common decent or help you reconcile it with your faith).

The plan is to meet at 10:00, when the museum opens, in the main hall with the giant dinosaur skeleton. We’ll wait for the inevitable late-comers to trickle in, then we’ll start the tour at 11am, where we’ll spend time learning about the evidence for the evolution of different species, including humans, elephants, whales, horses and fish.

Perhaps even a post-tour lunch could be organised as well in The Delhi Brasserie (134 Cromwell Road, SW7 4HA)

The provisional date for this is Saturday 12th of November 2016.

I hope people are interested. Let me know if you’d like to attend or contribute intellectually to the tour.

xjwmeetup@hotmail.com

Ste

p.s. Please remember that I’m organising this for free, and paying the organiser dues of £12/month out of my own pocket, so if you can, please paypal a small amount to xjwmeetup@hotmail.com or bring some change to pay for the upkeep of the group.